This invention relates to dispensing liquids in precise volumes and more particularly to the transfer of liquid from a reservoir to a point of use by a pump having a displacement piston and a rotating piston valve communicating with one of a plurality of liquid ports.
The ability to deliver precise small volume amounts of liquids without introduction of contaminants is quite important in the manufacture of many products, especially in the electronics industry. A semiconductor foundry has several principal areas-metrology, lithography, and track where resist and developer must be rapidly and precisely dispensed. More specifically, photolithography requires precise repeatable delivery of photoresist and developer at different rates such as volumes of 0-10 ml.+-.0.1%, repeatable to within .+-.0.1 volume % with substantially no contaminants or air bubbles. If these requirements cannot be met consistently, it adversely impacts the yield of the process. See, e.g., Chang & Sze, ULSI Technology (1996) hereby incorporated by reference.
The semiconductor industry provides, for example, different pumps such as piston pumps, diaphragm pumps, and peristalic pumps to transfer liquid from a liquid reservoir to a dispense nozzle above a silicon wafer in a spin station. After the liquid is dispensed any residual liquid left in the tip of the nozzle is drawn back slightly so that the resulting meniscus force prevents uncontrolled drips on the wafer and the wafer is rotated at high rpm to spread the liquid uniformly over the wafer.
The liquid dispensing system must also provide a filter to capture contaminants which might be introduced in the liquid dispensed. When the filter is upstream of the pump, it captures the contaminants generated for example at the reservoir and/or the reservoir line leading to the pump but will be ineffective at capturing contaminants generated in the pump which then enter the liquid dispensed on the wafer. When the filter is downstream of the pump, the filter may capture pump generated contaminants but may still release air bubbles and contaminants into the dispensing system during draw back mode when the liquid reverses direction through the filter, which tends to dislodge some of the particles caught in the filter.